Mexico Official Caught Up in U.S. Legal Maze

When Mario Ruiz Massieu, Mexico’s No. 2 lawman, arrived at New Jersey’s Newark International Airport en route to Madrid on a windy winter day in 1995, a surprise awaited him. A man accustomed to taking others into custody, he was seized by federal agents with $44,000 in unreported U.S. currency in his briefcase.

That was the beginning of what so far is a two-year trek through a legal maze for Ruiz Massieu--a trek termed “Kafkaesque” by one judge--that is still not over for the former deputy attorney general.

Although he has not been convicted of any crime, Ruiz Massieu has been held in U.S. custody for 28 months, most recently under house arrest in New Jersey, while officials of two countries try to clarify his status. During that period, no fewer than four federal judges have issued separate rulings against efforts by U.S. authorities to extradite him to Mexico, where he is wanted for prosecution on drug-related charges.

The judges have declared there is insufficient evidence by U.S. standards to support the Mexican charges that Ruiz Massieu, 46, was corrupted by drug traffickers or that he embezzled $200,000 that his office seized from drug dealers. Mexican prosecutors also claim that not only did he flee with the drug traffickers’ bribes and profits but that he also obstructed an inquiry into the 1994 assassination of his brother, Jose Francisco, an official of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, to protect people close to former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

The Clinton administration, out of a determination to cooperate with Mexican law enforcement authorities, refuses to stop trying to send Ruiz Massieu back home. Thus he remains cooped up in a rented house in a Newark suburb, wearing an electronic ankle bracelet to monitor his movements, forbidden to leave the premises.

The administration’s only legal victory to date has come in a civil proceeding. In March, a jury in Houston upheld the U.S. government’s seizure of $9 million that Ruiz Massieu controlled in a Texas bank account. Jurors accepted testimony by U.S. law enforcement officials that most of the money originated from Mexican drug traffickers and that Ruiz Massieu fled Mexico to enjoy this illicit wealth.

The jury dismissed Ruiz Massieu’s claim that the bank deposits came from his family’s fortune, as well as from generous bonuses paid him by his superiors in the Salinas administration.

There was testimony that most of these deposits looked suspiciously like drug money--boxes and suitcases stuffed with $20 bills bound with rubber bands, hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time.

The civil jury verdict, however, stands in sharp contrast to the lack of success federal prosecutors have had in convincing a series of judges to deport Ruiz Massieu for alleged criminal conduct.

In the most recent ruling, in May, U.S. Immigration Judge Annie S. Garcy of Newark said U.S. officials have failed to offer “reasonable, substantial and probative evidence” to support claims that Ruiz Massieu is corrupt. Garcy was especially critical of the government for basing its case on a seldom-used provision of federal immigration law enacted only seven years ago.

That provision says that the secretary of State may seek to deport any foreigner “whose presence or activities in the United States [the secretary] has reasonable grounds to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for this country.

In a petition last year, then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher argued that freeing Ruiz Massieu from U.S. custody would “jeopardize our ability to work with Mexico on law enforcement matters” in view of that country’s determination to prosecute him on corruption charges.

But Garcy said in her sharply worded opinion that the U.S. government had failed to offer evidence “of what it is . . . that is a reasonable ground for the secretary’s belief.” Noting that Ruiz Massieu has been kept in U.S. custody since he tried to depart for Madrid in March 1995, she added with a touch of irony: “The secretary of State cannot have reasonable ground to complain about the presence of an alien who is forced to remain by United States government action.”

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Garcy’s ruling, which U.S. officials are appealing, comes on the heels of similar objections by three other federal judges.

U.S. Magistrate Ronald Hedges of Newark, the first to rule in the case two years ago, said there is too little evidence to connect Ruiz Massieu with a cover-up of his brother’s assassination, especially because some of the alleged proof had been obtained through police torture of witnesses. In addition, Hedges found no clear connection between the missing drug funds and money deposited in Ruiz Massieu’s Texas bank account.

Subsequently, U.S. prosecutors took their pleadings to another judge in Newark, Magistrate Stanley Chesler. But after discovering some Mexican documents lacked credibility, the prosecutors acknowledged that they were no longer confident that they could clearly trace Ruiz Massieu’s alleged embezzlement.

Chesler decided this development caused such “substantial damage” to the government’s arguments that he threw the case out.

U.S. authorities then changed tactics completely. Instead of trying to extradite Ruiz Massieu to Mexico on criminal evidence that two judges had challenged, they argued before a third federal judge that he should be deported simply on “foreign policy” grounds.

But U.S. District Judge Maryanne Trump Barry ruled that this approach allowed Ruiz Massieu no meaningful response. She called it unconstitutional, “Kafkaesque” and a “breathtaking departure” from other methods of deporting unwanted foreigners.

With the latest ruling by Garcy, based on reasoning similar to Barry’s, U.S. attorneys had no recourse but to appeal once again--this time to the Board of Immigration Appeals, the ultimate arbiter in deportation cases.

Arguing for reversal of Garcy’s ruling, David Dixon, the top appellate lawyer for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, has filed a brief declaring that the secretary of State was not required “to produce evidence in support of [his] finding” that Ruiz Massieu’s continued presence here would adversely affect U.S. foreign policy.

Dixon said it should be obvious that such foreign policy considerations involve “bilateral law enforcement cooperation and the anti-corruption campaign of the Mexican government” under current President Ernesto Zedillo.

With a ruling from the immigration appeals board not expected until fall, attorneys for Ruiz Massieu are pressing to alleviate the conditions of his house arrest.

“It’s never been proved, after all, that he has done anything wrong,” said Robert Frank, his principal defense attorney.